Category: Spiritual Journey

Reality

Reality is what we all know about as long as we don’t think. It’s not meant to be thought about but reacted to; as threats, awareness of danger; bred into our bones by countless years of evolution. But now, after those countless years, we have a brain and a different kind of awareness that can wonder about such things. Is such wonder worthless? Who knows. Worthless or not, I’m stuck with it because I enjoy ruminations and trying to understand what we take for granted, finding as I think harder, nothing but mystery. In this post I will begin to talk about “reality” and try to clarify the idea somewhat, bringing in Zen, which may or may not be relevant.

In thinking about “reality” I will take it as a primitive, attempting no definition. One may try to get at reality by considering “fiction”, perhaps a polar opposite. In this consideration one notes that Aristotelean logic doesn’t apply. There is a middle one can’t exclude, because, in this case, the middle is larger and more important than the ends of the spectrum.

One can begin to work into this middle by considering the use of the word “fiction” in Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, where “fiction” is applied to societal conventions and laws. Sapiens is a fascinating book, but Harari’s use of the word “fiction” for “convention” rubbed me the wrong way. Although laws and conventions are, strictly speaking, fictions, they have one property popularly attributed to “reality”. A common saying is: “One doesn’t have to believe in reality. It will up and bite you whether you believe in it or not.” The same applies to laws and convention. If one is about to be executed for “treason”, it doesn’t matter that the law is really a “fiction”, compared perhaps with physical reality. In fact, most “realities” whether physical or societal possess a large social component. This area of social agreement comes up when one judges whether another human is sane or crazy. The sine qua non of insanity is its defiance of reality as it is conceived by we “sane ones.” Unfortunately, it is all too easy to forget that conventions are a product of society and take them as absolutes. Teenagers are notorious for wanting to be “in” with their crowd even when the fashions of the crowd are highly dubious. But many so-called grown-ups are equally taken in by the conventions of society. Most of the time it is easy and harmless to go along with the conventions, but one should always realize that they are, in fact, made up and vary from society to society. Presumably that is what Harari was trying to emphasize.

Then there are questions of the depth of realities. In many cultures there is a claim for “levels of reality” beyond everyday physical realities like streets, tile floors, buildings, weather, and the world around us. Hindu mystics consider the “real” world Maya, an illusion. Modern physics grants the reality of the everyday world, but has found a world of possibly deeper reality behind it. There are atoms, molecules, elementary particles, all governed by the “reality” of quantum mechanics which lies behind what one might be tempted to call the “fiction” of classical mechanics. No physicist “really” considers classical mechanics a fiction, though perhaps many would claim there is a wider and possibly deeper reality behind it. Most physicists would leave such questions to philosophers and would consider serious thought about them, a waste of time. Physics first imagined the reality of molecules in the nineteenth century, explaining concepts and measurements of heat related phenomena. For example, temperature is the mean kinetic energy of molecular motion related to what we measure with a thermometer by Boltzmann’s constant. In the early 20th century there were very reputable scientists skeptical of the existence of atoms and molecules. Most of them were convinced of the atom’s reality by Einstein’s theory of Brownian motion (1905). As the 20th century wore on the entire basis of chemistry was established in great detail by quantum theories of electron states in atoms and molecules. In the twenties and thirties cosmology came into being. Besides explaining the genesis of atomic elements, cosmology, using astronomical observations and theory, finds a universe consisting of 10’s of billions of galaxies, each consisting on average of 10’s of billions of stars, all of which originated in a “big bang” some 13.6 billion years ago. In a later post I’ll consider the current situation physics finds itself in, with dark matter, dark energy, string theory, and ideas of a multi-verse. If one considers these as realities, one should not hold such a belief too firmly. History teaches us that physics is subject to revolutions which alter the very “facts” of physical reality. Besides the lurking revolutions of the future one notes that the “realities” of physics and chemistry lie in their theories which have proved essential for the “reality” of our modern technologies. One might claim however, that these are theories of reality, rather than a more immediate impingement of reality in our lives. I hope to say more about “physical reality” in the next post.

Leaving the physical world, one asks, “What about myth, an admitted fiction?” If a myth has a deep meaning and lesson for our lives, doesn’t that entail a certain kind of reality of more importance than a trivial sort of physical reality? Consider “myth” vs. “history”. Reality for history depends on “primary sources”, written records. The “written” record might be that of an oral interview when recent history is concerned; but the idea is that there is a concrete record of some kind that relates directly to the happenings that history is reporting. Consider the stories about Pythagoras I wrote about in the last post. These stories were based on “secondary sources”, accounts written hundreds of years after Pythagoras’s death, relying on hearsay or vanished primary sources with no way of telling which was which. They form the basis for the shallow kind of myth that gives “myth” its common pejorative connotation. We dismiss the myths about Pythagoras’s golden thigh, his flying from place to place, where he may appear simultaneously, not simply because these claims conflict with our present scientific world view, but because they have no relevance to facts about Pythagoras which matter to us in considering his contributions to the history of mathematics. The myths about Pythagoras can be considered “trivial” myths which discredit the very idea of myth. But what about deeper myths? Most religions tell stories about their founders and contributors which have a high mythic content. I ask in this context, “Does distinguishing between myth and historical reality in matters of religious history, really matter, or matter at all?” Buddhists are notorious for being unfazed when various historical stories are proven fictional by historians. I would baldly state their attitude as: “The religious importance of the story is what matters; not the factual truth of every so-called fact in the canon.” Getting closer to home, I might ask, “Suppose the facts about Jesus’s physical existence were convincingly proved to be completely fictional. Would it matter to Christianity?” I would guess that it WOULD be devastating to believers, but that, in fact, it SHOULDN’T be. What matters in Christianity is the insight that feelings of love are deeply embedded in the universe and that Jesus, whether a fictional person or not, is responsible for bringing this “fact” to life, to showing that in the deep mystery one might call “God”, there is a forgiveness of the animal brutishness of humans. If through an active nurture of love in ourselves we experience this deep truth and express it in the way we act towards others, we redeem ourselves, and potentially, all of humanity. The stories, “myths” if you will, help us towards this experiential realization, a realization that is utterly unrelated to “belief”, a realization which could be called “Christian Satori”. The uniqueness of Christianity, as far as I can tell, is this emphasis on “love”. Unfortunately, the methodology of Christianity, with its historical emphasis on grasping ever harder at “belief”, is deeply flawed, leading backwards to the brutishness, rather than forward to love. Certain Christian thinkers, Thomas Merton for example, seem to have realized that Zen practice can be helpful in reaching a deeper understanding of their religion. One aspect of a Western Zen would be its applicability to a Western religious practice of a more deeply realized Christianity. Actually, whether or not “love” is embedded in the universe, we, as humans are susceptible to it, and can choose to base our lives on realizing its full depths in our beings.

Getting back to “reality”, I’ll consider possible insights from traditional Eastern Zen. So far in talking about Zen I’ve emphasized the Soto school of Japanese Zen and have tried to show how various Western ideas are susceptible to a deeper understanding by means of what might be called Western Zen. Actually, I claim that the insights of Zen lie below any cultural trappings; and that for a complete understanding, particularly as such might relate to “reality”, one should consider Zen in all its manifestations. The Rinzai Japanese school is the one we typically find written about in the US. It is the school which perhaps (I’m pretty ignorant about such matters) has deeper roots in China where Zen originated and the discipline of concentrating on Koans came into being. An excellent introduction to this school is the book Zen Comments on the Mumonkan, by Zenkei Shibayama, Harper and Row, 1974. The Chinese master Wu-men, 1183-1260, collected together 48 existing Koans and published them in the book, Wu-wen kuan. In Japan Wu-wen is called “Mumon” and his book is called the Mumonkan.

During the late 1960’s and early 1970’s I attended an annual conference of what was then called the Society for Religion in Higher Education. Barbara, my wife at the time, as a former Fulbright scholar, was an automatic member of this Society. As her husband I could also attend the conference. The meetings of the Society were always very interesting with deeply insightful discussions going on, day and night. These discussions never much concerned belief in anything, but concentrated on questions of meaning and values. In fact, the name of the Society was later changed to the Society for Values in Higher Education. During one of the last meetings I attended, possibly in 1972, there was much discussion about a new Zen book that Kenneth Morgan, a member of the Society was instrumental in bringing into being. Professor Morgan had arranged for the Japanese Master Zenkei Shibayama to give Zen presentations of the Mumonkan at Colgate University. The entire Mumonkan had been translated into English by Sumiko Kudo, a long-time acolyte at Master Shibayama’s monastery and was soon to be published. Having committed to understanding Zen, I was very interested in all of this and looked forward to seeing the book. After moving to Oregon in 1974 I kept my eyes open for it and immediately bought it when it first appeared at the University of Oregon bookstore. Later, I developed a daily routine of doing some Yoga after breakfast and then reading one of the Koans.

The insights that the Koans are to help one realize are totally beyond language. The Koans may be considered to be a kind of verbal Jiujitsu, which when followed rationally will throw one momentarily out of language thinking into an intuitive realization of some sort. I had encountered various Koans before working through the Mumonkan and had found little insight, but, as a student of physics and mathematics, thought of them as fascinating problems to be enjoyed and solved. I realized that in working on a difficult problem in math or physics, the crucial break-through often comes via intuition. One has a sudden insight, and even before trying to apply it to the problem, one realizes that one has found a solution. In a technical area one’s insight can be attached to mathematical or scientific language and the solution is a concrete expression which solves a concrete problem. I realized that with Zen, one might have a similar kind of intuitive insight even if it could not be expressed in ordinary language, but, perhaps, could be stated as an answering Koan to the one posed. Another metaphor besides the Jiujitsu one, is the focusing of an optical instrument, such as a microscope, telescope or binoculars. Especially when trying to focus a microscope one can be too enthusiastic in turning the focusing wheel and turn right past the focus, seeing that for an instant one had it, but that it was now gone. With a microscope one can recover the focus. With a Zen Koan the momentary insight is usually lost and efforts at recovery hopeless.

A somewhat better example of this focusing metaphor occurred when I was a professor at Auburn University. One quarter I taught a lab for an undergraduate course in electricity and magnetism. This was slightly intimidating as I was a theoretical physicist with little background in dealing with experimental apparatus. One afternoon the experiment consisted of working with an ac (alternating current) bridge similar to a Wheatstone bridge for direct current, but with a complication arising from the ac. Electrical bridges were developed in the nineteenth century to measure certain electrical quantities which are these days more easily measured by other means. Nowadays the bridges mainly have pedagogical value. With a Wheatstone bridge one achieves a balance in the bridge by adjusting a variable resistor until the current across the bridge, measured by a delicate ammeter, vanishes. One can then deduce the value of an unknown resistor in the circuit. With ac there is not only resistance but also a quantity called reactance, which arises because a magnetic coil or capacitor will pass an ac current. To adjust an ac bridge, one twiddles not only a variable resistance but a variable magnetic coil (inductor) which changes the reactance. In the lab there were about 5 or 6 bridges to be set up, each tended by a pair of students. The students put their bridges together with no difficulties; but then, after about 10 minutes, it became clear that none of the student teams had been able to balance their bridge. The idea was to adjust one of the two adjustable pieces until there was a dip in the current through the ammeter. Then adjust the other until the dip increased, continuing in this back and forth manner until the current vanished or became very small. It turned out that no matter what the students did, the current though the ammeter never dipped at all. Of course, the students turned to their instructor for help in solving their problem and I was on the spot. The experience the students had is quite similar to dealing with a Koan. No matter what one does, how much one concentrates, or how long one works at it, the Koan never comes clear. With the ac bridge the students could actually have balanced it by a systematic process, but this would have taken a while. I should have suggested this, but didn’t think of it. Instead I had a pretty good idea of some of the quantities involved in the circuit, whipped out my slide rule (no calculators in those days), and suggested a setting for the inductor. This setting was close enough that there was a current dip when the resistor was adjusted and all was well. The reason that balancing an ac bridge is so difficult is that the two quantities concerned, the resistance R and the reactance X, are in a sense, at right angles to each other, even though they are both quantities measured by an electrical resistance unit, ohms, which is not spatial at all. Nevertheless, even though non-spatial, they satisfy a Pythagorean kind of equation

R² + X² = Z²

where Z is called the Impedance in an ac circuit. The quantities R and X can be plotted at right angles to each other and a triangle made with Z as the hypotenuse. If one adjusts either R or X separately, one is reducing the contribution towards the impedance of one leg of the triangle which does not greatly affect the impedance, at least not enough to noticeably change the current through the ammeter of an ac bridge. Incidentally, what I’ve just explained is a trivial example of a tremendously important idea in theoretical physics and mathematics called isomorphism, in which quantities in wildly different contexts share the same mathematical structure.

I hope that the analogies of verbal Jiujitsu and getting things into focus make somewhat clearer the problem of dealing with Koans. One might well ask if such dealing is worth the trouble and, on a personal note, what kind of luck I’ve had with them, especially as they might throw some light on the nature of “reality”. First, I must say that I have found that engaging the Koans of the Mumonkan is very worthwhile even though most of them remain completely mysterious to me. Moreover, even though I have had epiphanies when reading some of the Koans or the comments about them, there is no way for me to tell whether or not I have really understood what, if anything, they are driving at. Nevertheless, after spending some years with them, off and on, in a very desultory, undisciplined manner, I feel that they have helped indirectly to make my thinking clearer. My approach when I first spent a year going through Zen Comments was to do a few minutes of Yoga exercises, with Yoga breathing and meditation, attempting to clear my mind. Then I would carefully read the Koan and the comments, not trying to understand at all, while continuing meditation. Typically, at that point, I would have a peaceful feeling from the meditation but no epiphany or understanding. I would then put the book aside and go about the business of the day until I repeated this exercise with the next Koan the next day. Sometimes I would skip a day and sometimes I would go back and look at an earlier Koan. This reading was very pleasant as an exercise. I tried to develop the attitude of indifference towards whether I understood anything or not and avoided getting wrought up in trying to break through. My feeling about this kind of exercise is that it does lead to some kind of spiritual growth whether or not the Koans make any sense. As for “enlightenment”, I think it is a loaded word and best ignored. A Western substitute might be “clarity of thought”. Whether or not meditation, studying Koans or just thinking has anything to do with it, I have, on occasion, been unexpectedly thrown into a state of unusual clarity, in which puzzles which once seemed baffling seemed to come clear. As for the Zen Comments I might make a few suggestions especially as they relate to “reality”. Consider, for example, Koan 19, “Ordinary Mind is Tao”, towards which the metaphor above, of finding a focus, might be relevant. If you haven’t heard about the concept of Tao, pick up and read the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu’s fundamental Chinese classic. Tao may be loosely translated as “Deep Truth Path”. Koan 19, as translated by Ms. Kudo reads as follows:

“Joshu once asked Nansen, ‘What is Tao?’ Nansen answered, ‘Ordinary mind is Tao.’ ‘Then should we direct ourselves towards it or not?’ asked Joshu. ‘If you try to direct yourself toward it, you go away from it,’ answered Nansen. Joshu continued, ‘If we do not try, how can we know that it is Tao?’ Nansen replied, ‘Tao does not belong to knowing or not knowing. Knowing is illusion; not knowing is blankness. If you really attain to Tao of no-doubt, it is like the great void, so vast and boundless. How then can there be right or wrong in the Tao?’ At these words Joshu was suddenly enlightened.”

Mumon Commented. This comment is very relevant.

“Questioned by Joshu, Nansen immediately shows that the tile is disintegrating, the ice is dissolving, and no communication whatsoever is possible. Even though Joshu may be enlightened, he can truly get it only after studying for thirty more years.”

I picked this particular Koan because it is one of the few that I feel I actually understand (although I may need another thirty years to really get it). Of course, I can in no way prove this. You must NOT be naïve and think that I understand anything. Furthermore, there is no real explanation of the Koan I can give. I can make a few remarks which should be considered as random twiddles of dials that may chance to zero the impedance in your mind.

First, the whole thing is a logical mess. On the one hand there is nothing special or esoteric about “deep truth path”. It is just the ordinary world (reality) that we sense. On the other hand, when we get “it”, the ordinary world dissolves and we feel an overwhelming sense of the infinite ignorance and non-being which surrounds the small island of knowledge we have attained in our human history so far. In fact, both the ordinary and the transcendent are simultaneously present to our awareness and one cannot be considered more significant than the other.

Note that this Koan is superstition free. There are no claims of esoteric knowledge. There are no contradictions of any scientific or historical claims to knowledge. There are no contradictions of anything we might consider superstitions. There is no contradiction of the doctrines of any religion. One might say that the Koan is empty of content. Of verbal content that is.

There is an implicit criticism of Aristotelean logic with its excluded middle. As I’ve already pointed out more than once in this blog, logic has a limited applicability. Part of the “game” of science is to accept only statements to which logic DOES apply. I may later go into stories from the history of physics of the difficulties of playing this exciting game of science, keeping logic intact, when experimental evidence seems to deny it. However, the “game” of physics or any other science is not all of life; and, in fact, Aristotelian logic has been, as I’ve called it in earlier blogs, “the curse of Western Philosophy” and an impediment to a deeper understanding of realities outside of science.

There is more to say about the Mumonkan, but I will leave such to a later blog post. As to differences between Soto and Rinzai Zen I wonder how serious these really are. Koan 19 seems to embody the Rinzai idea of instantaneous enlightenment until one sees Mumon’s comment about another 30 years being required for Joshu to really get it. The Soto doctrine is of gradual enlightenment and a questioning of the very “reality” of the enlightenment concept. A metaphor for either view is the experience of trying to get above a foggy day in a place like Eugene, Oregon, where, when the winter rain finally stops, the clear weather is obscured by a pea-soup fog. One climbs to a height such as Mt. Pisgah or Spencer’s Butte and often finds that though the fog is thinner with hints of blue sky, it is still present. But then there is perhaps a partial break and one sees through a deep hole towards a clear area beyond the fog. This vision may be likened to an epiphany or even to the “Satori” of Rinzai Zen. If we imagine we could wait on our summit for years until, after many breaks, the fog completely clears away, that would be full enlightenment.

Leaving any further consideration of Koan 19, I will end this post on a personal note. If indeed I’ve had a deep enough epiphany to consider it as Satori, this breakthrough has helped reveal that I have a healthy ego, lots of “ego strength”, a concept that Dr. Carr, head of the physics department at Auburn came up with. Experimental physicists, such as Dr. Carr, like to measure things. “Having a lot of ego strength” was his amusing term for people who are overly wrapped up in themselves. My possible Zen insights have not diminished my ego at all. Rather, they have helped to reveal it. I’ve learned not to be too exuberant about insights which as a saying goes, “leave one feeling just as before about the ordinary world except for being two inches off the ground.” If I get too exuberant, I wake up the next day, feeling “worthless”, in the grip of depression. This is a reaction to an unconscious childhood ego build-up in the face of very poor self-esteem. Part of spiritual growth is perhaps not losing one’s ego, but lessening the grip it has on one. I hope that further practice helps me in this regard. Perhaps, some psychological considerations can be the subject of a later post. I will now, however, work on the foundations for such a post by attempting to clarify the “reality” status of scientific theories. Back to Top

Meditation or How I learned to Windsurf

There are millions of writings, of one kind or another, about meditation, of one kind or another. So my challenge here is to say something fresh enough that it will encourage those among you who haven’t tried meditation to do so.

The title of this piece is deliberately misleading. If you think I’m going to show how deep meditation put me in a “zone” so that I quickly mastered windsurfing, you are sorely mistaken. I will find an important connection between sail boarding and meditating, but one of a subtler nature.

My first experience with a sail board was on Dorena Lake near Cottage Grove, Oregon, at Baker Bay County Park.  I was able rent a genuine Windsurfer there in spite of never having sailed such before. This was back in the 1980’s when the very idea of sailing on a board was new and the board sailing craze had barely started. Back then people were not as fussy as now about renting such equipment to total novices. I figured that although I had never sailed a board before, I shouldn’t really have much difficulty. I had surfed respectable southshore summer storm surf at Waikiki and had sailed enough in small boats that I felt confident that I could manage a Windsurfer with only minor difficulties. I had only recently read about this brand new way of sailing and was immediately filled with excitement about the simplicity and freedom of roaming on a board, standing and without paddling. True, there was no rudder for steering on a sail board, but I had read about and understood how one steers without a rudder. If one holds the sail so that most of the sail area is in front of the mast as it pivots on the board, the wind will turn the board down wind. Simply move the sail area back, behind the mast to turn into the wind. To keep moving straight ahead find a judicious balance so that there are equal areas before and behind the mast while making minor adjustments to correct one’s course. What could be simpler? Well, the quote falsely attributed to Yogi Berra is extremely pertinent here. “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

Out on the lake it was breezy, but not too breezy. Conditions were perfect for learning to windsurf, but there were far too many things to keep track of at once. The board was tippy, but not as tippy as my surf board was at Waikiki. The Waikiki board was a sizable board referred to as a “tanker” by the local kids and I could actually stand on it when it wasn’t on a wave. One afternoon when the waves were small and barely surfable, I enjoyed standing on it while the trade winds on my back blew me out to sea where I could catch one of the small waves and ride back in. However, on my Waikiki board there was no mast with flapping sail and I only needed to balance without also trying to think about moving a sail in a wind that would gust, ebb and even change direction. On Dorena I tried to sail up wind by moving the sail back, and, sure enough the board would turn into the wind. And keep turning until I was “in irons”, directly into the wind. At which point I would fall into the water, clamber back on the board, stand up, and carefully lift the clumsy sail out of the water by the up-haul. Then as I pulled the sail into position, the wind would do something funny and I would be back in the water again. After two hours and much effort I was about two hundred yards downwind from where I started, gave up, and swam the board with its sail dragging in the water back to where I started.

As the summer wore on I kept trying to sail and gradually learned how. It was a matter of constant thought, however. Haul the sail up out of the water, while leaning against its weight with up-haul in both hands. Swing the mast and hanging sail forward or back to get the board’s length across the wind. Then keeping balance, reach across and grab the boom on the right side using the left hand (At first this seems somewhat counterintuitive.) Pull the mast and sail towards the front of the board, then grab the boom with the other hand and trim the sail position as the board starts moving. Try not to lose balance. Then shakily enjoy sailing with one’s butt hanging out to windward until a gust makes one let go of the boom or a sudden drop in the wind ends the support of the sail and one falls backwards into the water.

Winter came and went and with the new summer it was time to try windsurfing again. As I went out on the board I was somewhat anxious. Could I remember all the stuff detailed in the last paragraph? I tried to think as I pulled up the sail. Then miracle. My hand reached across grabbing the boom, forward pull, other hand on boom and I sailed away. Over the winter my muscles and nervous system had remembered and my brain didn’t need to think or remember. This experience was startling because so unexpected. Ordinarily when one learns a skill the body learning is gradual and not nearly as intense and concentrated as when learning to windsurf. Nor is there usually a long interruption, so that the body learning is not dramatically noticeable. Nevertheless in learning any skill, bodily learning though it may not be noticeable, is very real and, I think, very important particularly when it comes to meditation.

Meditation with its emphasis on breathing, lungs and brain involves biological systems that have been under evolutionary pressures for some 300 million years or so, give or take a few million. Not surprisingly we are seldom consciously aware of what goes on as we breathe unless something is seriously wrong with us or we’re climbing at high altitude. With meditation, however, we are not only consciously controlling our breathing but simultaneously hoping that the breathing will help us to empty our mind of thought while keeping it clear and aware. Though the complexity of this task seems less than that of windsurfing, when one gives it some thought, one realizes that there is not simply muscle control involved, but also control of one’s consciousness as well. Ordinarily we are thinking about SOMETHING, or we day dream. In any case our minds are full of thought. Outside of meditation the closest one comes to an empty, aware mind is in an athletic situation – waiting for a serve in tennis or volleyball, or for the “hike” in football or a pitch in baseball. When we are not in athletic anticipation, this empty minded state is highly unnatural and only partially under conscious control. Proper breathing helps.

I first became aware of the idea of deliberate controlled breathing when I discovered in a box of abandoned books The Hindu Yoga Science of Breath. This was during the war, probably in 1944 when Kaiahulu, a vacation house for Castle and Cook employees, was released by the military from its use as an R and R facility. What such a book was doing there I could hardly imagine. I was fifteen. In the book I read of various yoga positions and kinds of breathing, of which the “complete breath” seems to have worked best when many years later I tried to meditate. At the time I had to try the various kinds of breathing and some of the yoga positions, including the improbable full lotus position in which one sits cross legged on the ground with one’s ankles atop opposite thighs. Probably this trial occurred a couple of years after I found the book at a time when I had taken up competitive swimming and was “loose as a goose” so to speak. In a couple of days I did it. Then in a few more days it was easy. And then I forgot it.

After reading about Zen I tried to practice meditation. Although sitting in the full lotus position while breathing in a regular in and out is the supposedly the gold standard, I could no longer come even close to the full lotus so sat simply with my legs crossed and breathed the “complete breath”. To do the complete breath one first notes that by lowering one’s diaphragm one can breathe into the bottom part of one’s lungs behind one’s stomach. Then note that by expanding one’s chest one can fill one’s lungs behind one’s chest. With the complete breath one starts by breathing into the lower lungs behind one’s stomach and then into the upper lungs. This is done in one smooth motion until one’s lungs are full. One stops for an instant and then exhales smoothly and regularly until the lungs are empty. One can imagine while inhaling that a mysterious energy fluid, the Hindu’s call prana, is coming in from the lungs, then up into one’s head all the way to its back leaving a delicious feeling in one’s head as one exhales. As a skeptical physicist I actually believe in prana about as much as I believe in phlogiston or the luminiferous ether, substances which turned out to be fictitious. So I don’t think one should believe in prana either, just experience a feeling as if there were such a thing. Although many people claim that breathing through one’s mouth is the correct way while meditating, I think that breathing through the nose is OK if one’s nose is clear. In my experience one is more likely to get the prana effect doing so. While in a skeptical mood, I’ll also claim that the only reason the full lotus is considered the proper position for meditation is because it enables one to have a straight back and fully fill the lungs. If one sits or stands with good posture, “firm like a mountain”, as one authority puts it, that works just fine in my experience. If fact I just sat straight upright in a chair the last time I did meditation over an extended period. I note however, that when my aunt who was interested in Zen went to Japan, she found that no one would compromise in the slightest their insistence on the full lotus position which for her was impossible because of her age and the stiffness of her joints.

Of course the real catch about meditation is not matters of position and breathing, but settling one’s mind into a blank, empty, alertness, wide awake, eyes open, no thoughts. As a beginner or even a fairly long time practitioner one finds that the clear mind is quickly invaded by thoughts. The proper reaction to this is not to get upset. Clear one’s mind if possible, and keep on going. In the beginning it helps to count one’s breaths – one, two, three, up to ten. Then start over. One can count breaths in and out, just in, or just out. I can’t see that it much matters though at first the in and out seems to work best. Getting back to the example of my first windsurfing experience, the lesson is not to keep going too long when things aren’t working. Then I kept going for two hours because I was sort of having fun. It is clear that another two hours would have been totally exhausting and worthless. With meditation, ten minutes at first is definitely enough. In fact if time is short, ten minutes is always enough to get the practice that leads in the long run to the automatic muscle, nerve, and mind learning.

For those of us living in modern times, with job, family, and countless activities, there is a real question about finding the time to meditate. My own experience is that I would go for years at a time without practicing meditation and then come back to it for several months. More recently the automatic learning entailed by this on and off practice over the years has kicked in and I’ve been able to settle in pretty well to clearing my mind while simply walking around during odd moments when there are no immediate demands on my attention. This practice brings to mind a Russian Orthodox practice called “the prayer of the heart”. Monks who engaged in this practice would constantly pray all day long as they went about their business at the monastery or their begging in the outside community. I’m not at all recommending anything as draconian as the prayer of the heart. However, simply hearing about this practice suggests that an emphasis of setting aside a time apart from the world of daily life in which one practices meditation is unduly limiting. One does the daily meditation so that the complete breath becomes ingrained. Then when one has a spare moment or if one feels unduly stressed start the breathing and clear the mind. Meditation then is not a thing apart but a continuing practice to be engaged in at any time one finds or needs a moment for relaxation in the middle of life.

A final question: why bother with meditation? What good is it? Is the trouble one goes to worth the result? Those who practice meditation note that it does tend to relieve stress and make one’s life go easier even, perhaps, putting one in a “zone”. That is certainly my experience. Besides being a stress reliever, meditation does seem to intensify the experience when one has a realization or a moment of insight. In addition, if one thinks that possibly, there is such a thing as a deep spiritual understanding, meditation is a practice that likely helps bring that understanding about. Back to Top

A Zen Path

So is Zen real? My recent feeling is to upgrade the answer from “maybe” to “quite possibly”, after 57 years of often lukewarm practice. I feel my life has been enhanced because my practice has deepened it without necessarily getting me anywhere spiritually. It is better NOT to believe in a practice, keeping a strong skepticism about any possible “enlightenment”. This skepticism enhances and concentrates one’s efforts of understanding life and getting clear about things, one aspect of the practice. Commitment consists of never giving up. As it turns out this practice is a specifically Western approach which I think is appropriate to those leading busy lives in the Western part of the world. It is closest to the Soto School of Japanese Zen which is the school of “gradual enlightenment”. The other main Japanese school, the Rinzai School uses Koans and strenuous efforts in an attempt to induce “sudden” enlightenment. Possibly there could be a Western practice based on the Rinzai School. I think it is partly a matter of personality. If one has a type “A” personality, pursuing goals passionately and rigorously, the Rinzai model MIGHT be appropriate. However, the Rinzai approach probably requires giving up all other aspects of one’s life, such as making a living. One probably would need to join a religious community of like-minded people, which is OK if one is inclined that way. The approach I’m advocating here does not require giving up one’s chosen life, will probably enhance it, and quite possibly lead to a deep spiritual understanding.

In what I’ve said above there is (at least) one possible point of confusion: I may have made it sound like the Japanese Soto approach is not very serious. If you’re left with this impression, it can be dispelled by reading Hard Core Zen by Brad Warner, an American, compelled by religious passion, who went to Japan and learned enough Japanese to work in Japanese sci-fi monster movies (which incidentally are great fun). Warner practiced for years under a Soto Zen master eventually becoming sufficiently aware to be certified a master in his own right. His book is absolutely first rate if one is not put off by his irritatingly colloquial English which is probably part of his shtick. So Soto Zen practice is by no means laid back. However, the Western practice I will be explicating in this blog is INDEED laid back and can easily be charged with a lack of seriousness. The only way to dispel this charge is to ask, does it work? The only proof of the pudding is in the eating. I’m talking here about my own practice, stumbled into inadvertently and almost by accident. The only credit I can claim is a stubborn (lazy) refusal to heed all the warnings about why it couldn’t possibly work. Is it working for me? There are slight hints that it might be. I FEEL that it is. In the face of a personality of great diffidence I recently now feel an outrageous certainty about some things and am willing to be dogmatic. Also, I actually feel an obligation that I must share some insights, a feeling in line with the Mahayana Buddhist idea of the Bodhisattva. Since I’m definitely not on the brink of “ultimate Samadhi”, I can only be an apprentice Bodhisattva, pointing out stumbling blocks and insights I’ve encountered in this kind of practice and using this blog as a Zen art in an attempt to improve my writing skills. Back to Top

Spiritual Quest, 1958-1959

It is fall, 1957. I am newly married to Barbara, my first wife. We are in Auburn, Alabama where I am a Temporary Instructor in the Physics Department at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, later to become Auburn University. We have ended up in Auburn because Barbara was acquainted with Dr. Howard Carr, head of the Physics Department and knew that the department badly needed people to teach elementary physics to engineering students and liberal arts majors. Letters written from Innsbruck plus a positive reference from my graduate adviser at Stanford (Georg Polya, a well-known mathematician) sealed the deal. Of course, I had pretty much forgotten the little physics I had ever known so I would need to learn the subject from the text I was teaching and try to stay a week or so ahead of my students. Since I was planning to become a physicist anyway, this was a fun challenge and I didn’t do too badly in meeting it. Certainly, I could appreciate and relate to the difficulties my students were having with the subject. Meanwhile, Barbara had decided to switch her major from mathematics to English literature so was taking graduate courses in the English Department.

That fall we were totally absorbed in life. I was passionately in love with Barbara and working hard on learning elementary physics and doing well with my teaching. As a faculty member I had easy access to football tickets and enjoyed going to games. The Auburn team that year was winning all their games, a new experience for me after watching games in high school and at Stanford. In high school I watched Punahou lose 64 – 0 to Kamehameha in their first game and lose every subsequent game thereafter. Stanford had a similarly bad season my freshman year. In retrospect I think that the Auburn team was the best college team I’ve ever seen. They had an overwhelming defense often holding opponents to negative yardage on the ground. Their games were not exciting because they did not seem to be very fired up. They would get a lead of a few points, shut down their opponents, and play out the rest of the game in a boring manner. There was only the suspense of wondering if the opposition would score on a fluke play. When it came time to play the last game of the season against arch-rival Alabama, the press was wondering if there would be an upset because Auburn’s wins had been less than dramatic while Alabama hadn’t done all that badly. The game started in a usual manner. Auburn won the toss and, as they always did in such circumstances, elected to kick. As the kickoff sailed down the field I suddenly realized I was looking at a different, fired up, team. The Alabama receiver took the ball in the end zone and started up the field, making little progress as flying tackles narrowly missed their target. The runner was shortly overwhelmed at about the 15 yard line. In the next few plays Alabama lost yardage and finally fumbled after a hard hit in their end zone. Auburn 7, Alabama 0. Subsequently Auburn finally displayed their offense. They did have an all-American end, Jimmy Phillips, who played sensationally and their ground game became effective. Final score 40 – 0. What impressed me about that Auburn team was the philosophy of doing the minimum necessary to win, in a relaxed manner, never playing to potential unless necessary or in a game with Alabama. This attitude, with its suggestion of power held in reserve, smacked of the Zen I would later encounter.

Also in that Fall Quarter I was becoming acquainted with Barbara’s family and numerous relatives, taking in the friendly Southern atmosphere, which overlay a terrible racism, seldom explicitly on display to me. However, I knew it was there. The first morning in Auburn I was awake at dawn, still not adjusted to the time change, so got up in the early light and headed to town up the main street. A black man came down the side walk in front of me, began to hesitate when about thirty feet away, then stepped off the sidewalk three or four feet into the street and cowered, half turned away from me with head bowed, as I walked by. I was totally appalled, having grown up in Hawaii where there are too many races and racial mixtures for serious prejudice though people other than haoles (whites) had been quite subjugated in the days before I grew up. By the time I was in high school, however, one could be taunted for being a haole and perhaps beaten up, so what prejudice there was operated in all directions. In Alabama, because I am a realist and definitely a coward as well, I never openly challenged the mores of that time, but tried to treat black people with respect.

A late poem of Wallace Stevens has the title “A Child Asleep in its Own Life”, suggesting the image of a child totally engaged and walking around with concentrated purpose, unaware of what was going on in its surroundings. It seems to me that I and probably Barbara were in a similar state of being that fall. We were fully engaged with our lives and with each other but I had certainly dropped all thoughts of a spiritual journey, of religion, or of anything else beyond our immediate circumstances. Winter Quarter came and things began to change. That quarter I was able to sit in on a class in quantum mechanics taught by Ernest Ikenberry. Professor Ikenberry was in the process of writing a text, loosely based on the quantum mechanics text by David Bohm. At the start of each class he would hand out three or four pages of mimeographed notes and then lecture, explicating the notes. Quantum mechanics for me was a revelation. I loved the mathematics and slowly came to realize that quantum physics totally demolished the deterministic world view of classical physics, a view that I had heartily disliked. I was delighted that physics had opened up in a way that could sit easily beside all the other worlds of human experience. Physics was going to be very exciting.

Another happening that made a huge impression on me was my first encounter with Zen. I can’t remember exactly when this was. Probably it occurred sometime during the Winter Quarter in 1958, or perhaps as late as early Spring Quarter the same year. In any case it came about because that year we were subscribing to Harper’s Magazine. My favorite writer appearing in the magazine at the time was Gilbert Highet whose essays were always interesting and beautifully written. So, it was with interest that I read Highet’s review of Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigal, which had been translated from German to English a few years before. Besides talking about the book Highet also had some additional thoughts about Zen Buddhism, which, at the time, was practically unknown in the US and completely unknown to me. Intrigued by Highet’s piece I went to the Auburn library and found not only Herrigal’s book but one or two others by D.T. Suzuki who in the late 1920’s had thought to introduce Zen to the West. Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism particularly impressed me. Here was a religion with no doctrines or beliefs. One was to discover one’s own insights through meditative practice, aided perhaps, by concentrating on crazy riddles, called Koans or Mondos.

Three things about Zen were apparent to me. First, it was a serious religion. By that I mean a religion that becomes the center of one’s life. Second, because Zen makes no concrete specific claims about the world, it could be the deep, wordless philosophical center encompassing all other more concrete subjects without conflicting with any of them. Finally, if pursued successfully, it had the potential to bring spiritual peace to one’s life in the face of death.

At the time I was by no means converted to the religion. Life was far too busy and I simply didn’t know enough about it. I loved the riddle characteristic of the Koans. They seemed like the problems in physics that I enjoyed struggling with. However, a Koan did not have a rational, mathematical answer as in physics, but a deep non-verbal answer enveloped with understanding – rather like a joke whose point one gets instantly or not at all. (Of course I “got” none of the Koans at the time.) It was clear to me, however, that I would have an enjoyable time ahead learning more about Zen and about the Buddhism it grew out of before I would understand enough for a possible commitment.

As the academic year at Auburn drew to an end there was much on my mind. I had been accepted at the University of Virginia as a graduate student in physics and I was off for a summer trip to the Tetons with Barbara and her young sister Mary, driving an old Ford and camping along the way.

Fall 1958 found us living in a dank basement apartment in downtown Charlottesville, parking the old Ford on hilly streets for more assured starting in the morning, and attending our classes at the University. My most exciting class in classical electricity and magnetism was taught by John Plaskett, English and only a few years older than myself. Starting from Maxwell’s equations he would develop the story of how they came to be and their consequences in a lucid manner. In the afternoon I would spend three to four hours going over my notes, being sure that I understood every nuance of the derivations. In class I always sat in the front row because Plaskett had the charming habit when coming to a key conclusion at the end of a long, mathematical argument of announcing the dénouement in a voice that sank to barely above a whisper. How embarrassingly immodest it would be to be blatant about a beautiful result. I imagined Plaskett as a Zen master who was bringing enlightenment through electromagnetism. If the mastery of archery could bring Herrigal to the brink of transcendent understanding, why wouldn’t theoretical physics serve just as well? Of course I suspect that Plaskett hadn’t the slightest idea he was practicing a Zen art, but I, in my naivety was stumbling upon the idea that depths can lurk anywhere, even in the beauties of a science devoted to understanding the most mundane materialistic reality.

Of course, in my spare time I checked out the University of Virginia library to see what it contained in books about Zen. There was more than at the Auburn library but not so much that I couldn’t read it all during the year. Besides studying physics and reading about Zen I was exposed vicariously to English studies. My fellow physics students remained acquaintances whereas Barbara’s fellow English students became our friends. People studying literature tend to be more articulate and socially interesting than scientists and engineers so we ended up running with the English crowd. Barbara’s most exciting studies were in classes taught by Fredson Bowers, an authority on the textual criticism of Shakespeare. She also had a class in which every poem written by Yeats was read and discussed. In earlier years I had discovered how moving poetry could be so I thoroughly enjoyed the discussions among our friends though my contributions were minimal.

Classes continued during the winter and through the spring and came to an end in June at the beginning of a miserably hot humid summer. That summer we would spend in Charlottesville where I had a job studying and hopefully contributing to centrifuge science. Luckily there was a swimming pool, surrounded by a shady lawn where we could hang out and be comfortable in the hot weather. And one afternoon while sitting in the shade with Barbara, cooling off after a swim, I became conscious that I was committing to Zen. Such a decision is not made consciously or rationally. I was very aware that I had little or no understanding and that the whole thing was a big mystery. However, it felt good that I intended to spend the rest of my life attempting to understand what it was all about. Back to Top

Spiritual Quest, 1953-1954

What compels one to sail on a spiritual journey? Fundamentally there is no real answer. It is a mystery similar to that arising when considering the question of why some people climb mountains. If someone who has no interest in mountains asks why I climb, I’m really at a loss to explain. It is obvious to me that often I feel more alive and full of joy on a mountain, seem to feel a sacredness in great mountains, seem to “see” further, and feel a sense of spiritual well-being and insight, indefinable in concrete terms. If a person is immune to such feelings, there is really nothing to be said that would give her or him a real, personal understanding of why one would feel compelled to climb a mountain.

As a child I was fortunate in having parents who were not conventionally religious. Neither ever went to church. There was no attempted brain washing. I was curious about religion and on one or two occasions actually went to Sunday school at Central Union Church in Honolulu. Sunday school there was obviously simply a place to harbor children while their parents were in church. Theology was conspicuously absent. No help there. Later, in high school, we had a Christian non-denominational chapel which I found exquisitely boring. I was already an unthinking atheist. So, later in life, when I felt the need for an understanding that was deeper than that provided by a scientific and humanistic education, I could approach the search, more or less unbiased by childhood experiences. I was open to any spirituality based on beliefs that seemed reasonable to a person who had unconsciously committed to a scientific world view.

In an earlier post I’ve already set out one criterion for my journey: it must be superstition-free and beliefs should not be based on their comfort level. Now, in the years after college as I worked as a mathematician in Pasadena for a branch of the Naval Ordinance Test Station, climbed and skied in the Sierra, and met the friend working on his Ph.D. in physics at Cal Tech, I gradually formed another criterion: Any spiritual outlook should be totally comfortable and compatible with a scientific world view. This is not to say that I thought a scientific world view the be all and end all of knowledge and life. I had heard about logical positivism in college and had taken it to claim (probably mistakenly) that the world of experience outside of science lacked meaning or validity. I felt that this view was ridiculous though I didn’t know enough about positivism to argue against it. I knew that I loved poetry, good poetry and kitschy bad poetry, was carried away by classical music, and felt impelled to try understand all of life, scientific and otherwise. Somewhere along the line I had run into the world of myth in Joseph Campbell’s books and found exciting his ideas about how myth gives meaning to life.

See http://www.amazon.com/Thousand-Faces-Collected-Joseph-Campbell/dp/1577315936/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1462321437&sr=1-1&keywords=joseph+campbell

Although I was captivated by the “worlds” outside of science, I decided that any religious claims that attempted to contradict the stories of the scientific world were unworthy of consideration as serious truth, spiritual or otherwise. At the time this left a big question in my mind. Was there already existing somewhere in all of mainstream world religion or in any existing sect, a spiritual path that satisfied the criteria I had developed? Back to Top

Comfortable Belief

I almost made this first post about wine, partly to emphasize that this blog is not confined entirely to spiritual matters. Of course, there might be some peripheral relation between wine and spirituality, but mostly I think wine is simply a joy of life and good company. It happens that it can be indulged in not only by drinking but by travel to great wine growing areas near where I live. I have, however, resisted wine because this is the very first post to the blog. Wine will be saved until later. Since, in fact, the idea of a spiritual journey is the main theme here, I should start with that.

So… Let’s begin with some fundamentals. Here is a paragraph I wrote Jan. 8, 2002.
1. About the time I got out of college I came up with some ground rules for a spiritual-religious quest. A basic idea is that one should try as hard as possible to be free of superstition in the spiritual quest. This is much more important for religion than for science simply because science has a built in mechanism for eliminating error that works pretty well most of the time. (The basis for this idea of a superstition free spirituality is the ancient idea that one should not worship false gods. Idolatry is perhaps the most serious religious sin. We are seeking the truth at any cost.) A rule that follows from this idea is that we should never try to believe something simply because it offers comfort.

This theme of rejecting beliefs of comfort began for me back in college days during a ride from the Bay Area to Yosemite to go climbing. It was dark and we were riding along in the Sierra foothills on the way to Camp 4 when somehow the talk turned to religious beliefs. One young woman said that she didn’t have any idea whether one survived after death. However, she found that idea comforting so that is what she believed. I was totally amazed and appalled by her remark. I don’t remember saying anything, being too polite in those days, nor do I recall that there was much if any discussion on the part of anyone else. This incident made a big impression on me and led to the idea that pursuing the “truth” at all costs as a basic spiritual postulate. All of this occurred back in the early 1950’s as I was just beginning to realize the importance of spiritual answers in my life. Back now to Jan 8, 2002.

2. This morning I had the thought that one should expand the rule. Rather than using it merely to reject ideas that have no basis but their “comfort”, one can use it to choose between competing possibilities about spiritual matters. One should base ones religious ideas on the seemingly “bleakest” possibility.

At first blush this idea seems somewhat perverse. Why go out of the way to consider what seems worst to one? I suppose the idea is to guard against the seduction of attractive ideas. We humans have a great capacity for rationalizing emotionally attractive ideas into the “truth”. If one cuts through what one thinks is the worst possibility and finds comfort anyway, the loss of the worst possibility isn’t likely to be too devastating. I note as a sideline that the comfort is the theme here, not the ideas themselves. I could imagine, for example, that immortality might get to be monumentally boring after a few thousand years, especially if one knew there was no escape. The saying “after the first death there is no other” might carry an appalling meaning in these circumstances. At the risk of being repetitive I’ll close this post from a note from Feb. 19, 2003.

7. One might ask, “Isn’t the whole point of religion to offer spiritual comfort?” “If so, choosing bleakness seems perverse.” My answer to this idea is first, I am unable to find any comfort in an idea that seems false on its face. Or to put it bluntly: Truth is more important than comfort. In seeking truth we hope that comfort might come as a by-product, but finding spiritual meaning is a more important goal. Back to Top